Sunday, December 22, 2013

Window on Eurasia: Census Data on Nationalities in Daghestan Almost Certainly Falsified

Paul
Goble

Staunton, December 22 – A close
examination of the late and still incomplete data from the 2010 census shows
that officials have made more than “arithmetic” mistakes in compiling the total
numbers and percentages of nationalities in Daghestan and almost certainly
falsified the numbers to boost the share of some nationalities and cut that o
others.

There are
at least three reasons why Dagestanstat did not trumpet the results. First, its
compilation and release of data comes weeks if not months after other federal
subjects have issued theirs. Second, it is still incomplete: of the planned
eight volumes for Daghestan, only six have been released, although they do
include the one on the ethnic composition of the republic.

Unlike in
other federal subjects, Daghestan has not yet published complete data on the
nationality breakdown of the population. But it is possible to glean something
about that critical data set by examining table four of the third volume on “Population
by Nationality and Langauge by Urban Districts and Municipal Regions of the
Republic of Daghetan.”

Unfortunately,
Futulayev points out, this data set is defective: One rural municipal district
is missing as are several rural settlements.Nonetheless, it should be possible to calculate data for those at least
in toto by using the summary data provided elsewhere. “But this turns out to be
impossible.”

Indeed,
if one does that kind of calculation, one discovers that the total number of
Lezins and Tabasarns for all these formations except the Kizlar district “exceeds”
their total for all of Daghestan while the number of Azerbaijanis in that
district should exceed 7,000, “an extremely doubtful” figure.

Happily
for researchers but not so for compilers, nationality data are arrayed in other
tables as well. In one, which lists numbers for 13 of the 14 “so-called titular
peoples of Daghestan (except the Tats),” the Lezgins number 387,746, 2506 more
than the figure released earlier, the Tabasarans 121,809, 2961 more, and the
Azerbaijanis 125,452, 5467 fewer.

What
makes these shifts so striking is that they are the only variation from the
previously released data and that the total number of the three groups has
remained unchanged at 635,007. This does not appear to be an “arithmetic”
error, not only because it involves three peoples rather than two but also
because it is difficult to believe that the change reflects the lack of data
for a single district.

Rectifying or at least explaining how
and why these shifts happened is critical for statistical and political reasons
both inside Daghestan and in the Russian Federation as a whole. That is because
errors in the data are multiplied whenever they are used together with other
data and because government assistance and power flow on the basis of the size
of an ethnic group.

Futulayev gives as an example the
way in which republic officials have calculated the growth of various
nationalities between the 2002 and 2010 censusAccording to the data Dagestanstat released earlier, the number of
Azerbaijanis in Daghestan increased by 17.3 percent during the intercensal
period, the number of Lezgins by 14.4 percent, and the number of Tabasarans 7.9
percent, despite the fact that the last had the highest recorded birthrate.

Using the new data, these increases
were 12.4 percent, 15.2 percent and 10.6 percent, figures that are more
plausible but that have the effect of calling into question both the reliability
of the data released in June 2012 and the accuracy of the new data which appear
to have been manipulated to get a desired result.

“Whatever were the causes of the
distortion of the data of the census on the nationality composition of the population
of the Republic of Daghestan,” Futulayev concludes, “clarity must be introduce into
this issue” because so much depends upon having accurate numbers in which
people can have confidence.